Mary+Williams

On September 15, 1925, Mary Williams, a 25-year-old Black woman born in Mississippi, died at Chicago's County Hospital from an abortion performed on her that day at an undisclosed location.

The person responsible for Mary's death was never identified, so it's impossible to know if Mary had availed herself of one of the plethora of physicians and midwives practicing abortion in Chicago at the time.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see [|Abortion in the 1920s].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Sources:
 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]
 * Cook County death index

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